Building Better Leaders...Try Again.

The Story of a Failed Leader Development Initiative - And What We Learned

This is a story about Leader Development.

It’s not a good news story. It’s a story about failure – and what we learned.

A leader’s primary role is to elevate their team to its highest potential. When a leader can bring out their team’s highest collective potential, and provide a common purpose, that’s leadership nirvana. Those are the teams that deliver results.

As a Brigade Commander, our unit spent a huge amount of time, energy, and effort exploring ways to make our Troopers their best version of themselves. We tried lots of things. Some worked better than others.

One of our most well-planned, well-resourced, well-coordinated, and well-executed, initiatives was to develop and transform our small unit leaders into high-end performance coaches. Said differently, we wanted our junior non-commissioned officers – the people who lead at the point of execution – to adopt a coaching style of leadership with their Soldiers. Every thread of emerging leadership doctrine suggests that this is the best way to get the most from your team.

It didn’t work. In fact, it was a mess. And we’ve got the data. Here’s what happened.

Over the course of 18 months, we attempted three different prototypes. Each was progressively scaled and resourced – with a corresponding emphasis on assessment and learning.

Prototype 1.

Over the course of a 90-day period, we partnered a single platoon with a Performance Specialist who worked in our Ready and Resilient Performance Center. She was great. She spent an hour or two a day with our Troopers in a tailored set of classes focused on mental readiness, mindfulness, and resilience. She deployed to the field with them, went to the range with them, and worked with them in the motor pool. Trust was high, they responded very well. Anecdotally, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. But the truth is, our assessment was terrible. We didn’t collect any longitudinal data to determine any impact or effect. So, we tried again.

Prototype 2.

We attempted to scale. Over a 90-day period we partnered the same Performance Specialist with four platoons – each from a different Battalion. We designed and implemented a very rigorous set of objective measurements – from fitness scores to disciplinary data. We briefed all of the participants and did our best to align the Performance Specialist’s engagements with each group to high impact training events.

It didn’t work.

In short, our singular expert’s time, effort, and energy was too diluted among the four platoons. And, because each platoon was ultimately responsive to a different Battalion Commander’s priorities and guidance, our execution wasn’t uniformly good. It was, in fact, bad. Despite my best efforts to communicate this initiative as a priority across the Brigade, it got lost in the shuffle. As you can imagine, our out brief and after-action review was awkward. So, we tried again.

Prototype 3.

This is where things get interesting.

We partnered with leader development experts across the Army – to include West Point’s Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership (BS&L) and the Army Resiliency Directorate (which has since been reorganized as the Directorate of Prevention, Resilience and Readiness).

With our partners, we built a tailored program of instruction. It included 8 hours of initial classroom training for all participants with subsequent 90-minute blocks of refresher training for leaders. It was the best curriculum that I had seen until that point. Subjects included:

- Coaching

o Counseling – Coaching – Mentoring

o High Performance Coaching Model

- Army Leader Development Competencies

o Leading Others

o Leading by Example

o Building Trust

- Motivation and Resilience

o Mental Toughness

o Building Grit

o Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets

o Progressive Muscle Relaxation

- Communication Competencies

o Counseling

o Giving Effective Feedback

o Various Goal Setting Models

We built a staff. We solicited funding, successfully, from the Army Resiliency Directorate for the temporary hiring of additional Performance Experts. As you can imagine, this was not small feat for a Brigade Combat Team – but we figured it out.

We partnered with a team from the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research (WRAIR) and commissioned a formal assessment of our curriculum and its impact on our training.

Then, in conjunction with Army’s Resiliency Directorate, WRAIR, and West Point’s Department of Leadership - we designed our pilot.

We identified 72 squads from across the Brigade and placed them into one of three groups.

Group 1 was our Control Group. Group 1 consisted of 24 Squads (approximately 216 Paratroopers). As our Control Group, Group 1 did not interface with our contracted performance coaches and did not receive any of the curriculum.

Group 2 was our “Classroom Only” Group. Group 2 was also composed of 24 squads of 216 Paratroopers. Group 2 received the previously described curriculum in a classroom setting. The class was conducted in a single 8-hour day, with subsequent 90-minute refresher classes for leaders.

Group 3 was our “Classroom Plus Embedded Coaching Group.” Group 3’s composition was identical to Groups 1 and 2. Group 3 received the same instruction and refresher instruction as Group 2. But, in addition to the classroom-based instruction, the squads assigned to Group 3 had a dedicated Performance Expert accompany them during physical training, motor pool activities, and field training – to include our unit’s bi-annual combat training center (CTC) rotation. In an embedded capacity, our Performance Specialists provided the Group 3 leaders and paratroopers with ‘over the shoulder’ coaching tips, resiliency and coping techniques, and periodic reminders on different leadership approaches and styles. It all seemed really good.

In order to assess our curriculum, we measured a mixture of subjective and objective performance measures. Our data analysis included:

Objective Job Performance Data:

• Army Combat Fitness Test Scores

• 5 Mile Run Assessments.

• 12 Mile Road March Assessment

Subjective (Survey Based) Assessments of Individual Effect:

• Mental Toughness

• Job Satisfaction

• Unit Moral and Command Climate

• Perceptions of Unit Leadership and Trust

Subjective (Survey Based) Assessments of Leadership Skills:

• Rating the Classroom Training

• Rating Interactions with Specialists in Field Environment

• Use of Skills

• Perceived Usefulness of Skills

We collected this data three times – before, during, and after the five-month training period. It terms of design, execution, and assessment, this was an extensive endeavor.

Here is where things get interesting. It didn’t work at all. Despite our best efforts, there was no evidence that our Troopers got stronger, faster, tougher, more resilient, or better in any manner. In fact, performance for Groups 2 and 3 went down in all areas.

A summarized bar graph of our objective data is below.

Objectively speaking –

1. Every group ACFT score improved. The Control Group’s improved the most.

2. The Control Group’s 5 Mile Run Time decreased (that’s good); Groups 2 and 3 both increased (that’s bad).

3. The Control Group’s 12-mile Road March time decreased (that’s good), Groups 2 and 3 both increased their times on the 12 Mile Road March (that’s bad).

A deeper look is more concerning. The bar chart below shows the variance in average (mean) times to complete the timed assessments. Every single “Post Curriculum Assessment” shows a greater variance in Squad scores. This means that the Squads didn’t maintain their unit integrity during the “Post Curriculum Assessment.” Said differently – their cohesion decreased. That’s bad.

Using the subjective data – the story doesn’t get better. From the official out brief generated by the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research:

- “Leader Training had no effect on squad member survey outcomes related to mental toughness, job satisfaction, unit moral, perceptions of leadership, or the importance of squad leader presence during the 12-mile road march.”

- Surveyed squad members “made no mention of any learned resiliency techniques employed during the road march, run assessment, or field training.”

We failed. Despite our best efforts to improve Soldier and unit performance through a concentrated leader development curriculum, we didn’t move the needle.

So, the question becomes, why? Why didn’t the curriculum work? Why didn’t the embedded Performance Experts improve the performance of their assigned teams.

I have a few theories.

First. I think it’s about the trust and relationship between the Performance Expert and the Troopers. In the first and most successful iteration, the Troopers had a well-established relationship with a singular expert. We were a small unit in a close-knit community; everybody knew and respected our installation’s one full-time Performance Expert. In the third iteration we aligned the 72 participating squads to three coaches who were assigned on a part time basis. They didn’t necessarily have the right amount of time to form the right relationships, and the relationships they did form were diluted across 24 different squads. They were trying to provide professional advice without a foundation of trust. No good.

Second. The coaching style of leadership may not be appropriate for standards-based organizations; specifically for the Army. Hear me out. In broad terms, the “Coaching Style” is when leaders focus on developing their team members’ skills and potential by providing feedback and support to achieve their own goes. The “Coaching Style” emphasizes the performance goals of the team member. But, in a standards-based organization, an individual team member’s goal is not the dominant factor. For example, for standard completion time for an Army 12 Mile Road March is 3 hours. For decades, and with millions of data points, we know that this is an optimal time standard to validate the mental and physical toughness required to complete almost all of the other Soldiering tasks. Using this example, my personal goal and aspiration really doesn’t matter if it’s not 3 hours or less; this simply isn’t a “do your best and get better and that’s good enough” situation. And, maybe really young Soldiers (newly assigned team members) don’t know what they are capable of. If that’s the case, their goal setting may be mis-calibrated with both the organizational standards and their actual potential.

Third. Maybe the introduction of the Performance Specialists diluted our Squad Leader’s leadership influence on their subordinates. Bear with me. Army leaders are 100% responsible for the care, wellbeing, and in this case – performance – of their subordinates. It’s unique and completely different than any other profession. But, even in the Army, there is a growing trend to outsource some aspects of leadership. The buzz word is “resources.”

It sounds like this, “We need to get that Soldier the right resources.”

Financial counselors, relationship counselors, family counselors, health and wellness counselors, strength coaches, performance experts…. the list goes on and one. We’ve built an entire cottage industry of “resources” to help people get through the trials and tribulations of military service…and life in general. Originally intended to assist the unit leaders, there is strong potential (and increasing trend) for junior leaders off load and outsource issues that have traditionally been handled by non-commissioned officers, Chaplains, and unit Commanders. Maybe we should be cautious about replacing “leaders” with “resources” and replacing “leadership” with “expertise.”

In truth, I’m not really sure why this didn’t work for us. It was a huge initiative – time, money, energy, emotion, effort. We truly believed that if we equipped our small unit leaders with a new set of coaching tools and techniques that our Soldiers would get better and our unit’s performance would improve.

So – we tried again – and the next time we got amazingly good results. But, that’s a different story.

(Acknowledgements. Special thanks to Brian Miletich and Nils Olson for making this project a reality. Nils especially, crushed it. For this essay I swiped the two charts from the Walter Reed Army Institute for Research’s official out-brief on the “Sky Soldier Toughness Initiative.” Each chart is slightly modified to make it more readable as a standalone graphic.)